This invention relates to an air conditioner and, in particular, to an air conditioner in a heating mode capable of blowing out warm air in heating mode.
In conventional air conditioners, the heat exchanger on the air upstream side is separated from the heat exchanger on the air downstream side, with the fin pitch of the air-upstream-side heat exchanger being smaller than that of the air-downstream-side heat exchanger, as described in Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. 62-1520 (B). Therefore, it has been necessary to separately prepare the air-upstream-side and air-downstream-side heat exchangers. The known example disclosed in the above-mentioned publication has been applied to an outdoor heat exchanger with the aim of obtaining a supercooled liquid. Relevant known examples include Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication Nos. 50-49757 and 58-108394 (A). Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 50-49757 (A) discloses a heat exchanger in which the refrigerant condenser is formed as a separate component composed of condenser sections including a superheated region, a saturation region, and a liquid region, or in which louver slits are arranged between and in parallel with pipe rows. In the heat exchanger disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 58-108394, the condenser has a supercooling section whose pipe diameter is smaller than those of the rest of the condenser sections and holes are punched in the fins, thereby hindering thermal conduction.
The contrivance in the above prior-art examples does not go beyond the provision of a thermally secluded section in the heat exchanger with a view to obtaining a superheated region. No consideration is given to the obtaining of blowout air having a temperature higher than the condensation temperature.